Nome Public Schools seek price lock and more funds for fuel
Nome Public Schools Superintendent Jamie Burgess has been watching the rising cost of fuel with concern. Last week, she told the school board that she’s hoping to lock in a price soon and she was granted a budget increase to pay for it.
Between the time Burgess wrote the request and presented it to the board a week later, the price of fuel oil per gallon had jumped from $4.84 to $5.08, meaning her request had to change from a fuel budget increase of $175,000 to an increase of $216,000.
“That’s how volatile our fuel market is looking right now,” Burgess said.
The City of Nome had opted not to lock in fuel prices in April or May for the fall barge delivery. However, Nome Joint Utility Systems has said the school district can lock in the price for its portion of fuel.
“We don’t think that at this point in time that gambling that the price is going to come down is the right fiscal move,” Burgess said. “It sounds like [the city’s] plan is still to ride it out. Or they may decide to lock along with us. We don’t know what their decision is going to be, and they said that whatever we want to do, that they’ll still support our decision.”
Business manager Genevieve Hollins told the board in her report that the district was weighing analyses from trusted business and economic sources, most of which predicted the cost of fuel would continue to rise through the end of the year and even through 2023. The one exception to these grim forecasts was the U.S. Department of Energy, which has claimed the price will drop, Hollins said.
“It’s hard to have a crystal ball to know what’s going to happen,” Hollins said. “We could lock in now and if the price goes up, we look really good and save lots of money. And if we lock in now, at least we know what we’re going to be spend for sure. Or we can wait and hope that it drops, and if it drops, then great. We could be out even more money if it continues to rise.”
In her regular report, Burgess shared the news that the City of Nome passed its budget for fiscal year 2023, with the school district receiving a total of $3.15 million. The state budget, which still had not been signed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy at press time, would put $100 million into Alaska’s major maintenance grant fund; Nome Public Schools would get $325,000 of that allocation put into its capital improvement, or CIP, fund. The district could tap into that fund to pay for the added costs of fuel, though Burgess said she would rather see that money spent on other expenses, like reimbursements for repairs. “If we have to use it for fuel, we have to use it for fuel, and then we can hope that we have a milder winter ahead of us.”
Other business
Burgess told the board that she is working on another draft of the district’s COVID mitigation plan to comply with new guidance from the CDC. She said a draft would be available for public feedback before the next school year starts.
She also reported that the district passed its preventive maintenance audit “with flying colors” and it passed its school system accreditation from Cognia, an education nonprofit. She explained a change to the background check criteria for employees, volunteers and chaperones. “We do believe in second chances,” Burgess said. “Sometimes we would have an individual that would have a violent crime in their background, and we want to make sure that that specifically didn’t always have to exclude an individual from employment, but we wanted to make sure that crimes involving violence against a minor person, that was something that we would have concern about.”
Besides the fuel budget increase, the board passed several other actions during the meeting. They approved minor changes to various sections of board policy, which mostly involved inserting language about professional boundaries between staff with students. They approved a three-year agreement that resulted from last month’s negotiations with the Nome Education Support Professionals Association. The agreement provides for an increase to the salary scale and added a few other benefits, such as health insurance to part-time permanent and seasonal employees who work at least 30 hours per week.
Burgess got approval to fund $119,000 worth of maintenance this summer for the Nome Elementary School’s playground, which needs a new fence as well as gravel and grading work due the shifting ground. She also got approval to replace the district’s oldest maintenance vehicle, a 2005 Chevrolet K2500 that is “reaching the end of its life.” She said the district would try to keep the purchase under $70,000. A sample quote for a comparable truck from a dealership in Anchorage had a price tag of over $46,000, and a quote from Alaska Marine Lines to ship it to Nome was over $10,000. “Shipping right now is extremely expensive,” Burgess said.
Five vacancies remain for the 2022-2023 school year, according to the HR manager’s report. The district is seeking a physical education teacher for Nome-Beltz, a secondgrade teacher for the elementary school, a special education teacher, a speech language pathologist and an Iñupiaq immersion teacher.
There was one public comment during the meeting from someone who said the lights outside the elementary school building were on all the time; he asked the board to consider addressing the issue, especially considering the energy crisis.
Despite the challenges, Hollins told the board the school district was “right on track” with its budget, with 83 percent of the revenue received, 84 percent of the budget spent and 91 percent of the year passed.
“It’s been a challenging year,” Burgess said at the close of the meeting. “Next year is going to be a challenge as well. I think it’s going to be kind of a lean year. We’re going to have to figure out ways to tighten our belts and try to get through things and figure out how to get ourselves back to a slightly more healthy financial position.”
The board will not meet in July. The next regular meeting is scheduled for August 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the Nome Elementary School Library and over Zoom.